2018 Experiments, 1st Quarter Follow-up

New Year resolutions always seem like an exercise in futility. Everyone does them. But, it is difficult to get the social support to make any kind of New Year resolution work. Failure is expected. Starting out in the aftermath of a holiday like New Year’s Eve probably doesn’t help much either.

New Year’s resolutions tend to focus on one big change, and they are rarely conceived in such a way as to accommodate the inevitable failures of implementation that come with trying anything new. And when doing something, you always learn things that differ from our preconceptions when starting out. So, you have to build in some flexibility into your program, and a resolution tends toward absolutes.

On the ketogenic diet, it is possible to lose a significant amount of weight. Within a few weeks of starting it, I lost just over ten pounds, probably the bulk of it due to water weight.

However, I found it difficult to stick to because eating is such a social activity. Invariably, there was a birthday party, a holiday, or some other social occasion where people encouraged me to come off diet. If I ate one thing, the next comment was, “Well, since you already ate cake, why not have some cookies too?” The holiday season was particularly challenging.

In retrospect, my suggestion is to not tell anyone that you are on a diet, whether it is ketogenic or some other type. As soon as people hear that you are on a diet, I believe social forces kick in, and people will try, likely not even consciously, to bring you back to your default routine. Few people will support your effort, particularly if your diet impacts them in any way.

If you are lucky enough to have a spouse or significant other joining you, it will be much easier to keep on diet. If you are on your own, you’re on your own. Keep a low profile and use excuses like you aren’t feeling well, aren’t hungry, and so forth to skip eating when out. Socializing is a killer of diets. If you like socializing, eat before you go and try to find activities where you are active and not eating.

I haven’t been following a ketogenic diet closely for several weeks. I started again in April, but I plan to keep it low profile. Thankfully, the few people that might read this post don’t care what I eat.

The HIIT Burpee program has been the biggest success thus far. Doing the program is probably another factor in why I am not taking off any weight, quite the opposite actually.

I started with the idea of 12 sets of timed burpees. But, in retrospect, the key issue is not time but the number of burpees per set.

The program probably should just be setting an interval timer with budgeting about 3-5 seconds per burpee in the set and then take a minute rest in between sets. With 12 sets, the whole thing can be done in less than 20 minutes. But, it should be noted that it hurts, and it probably shouldn’t be done more than twice a week.

Start from 1 per set and work your way up. If 12 sets is too much, do 2 rounds of 6 sets or 3 rounds of 4 sets, with 3 to 5 minutes of rest to catch your breath per round. If you do these exercises on concrete, it helps to wear a set of leather work gloves if you don’t want bloody finger tips.

In the beginning of the HIIT program, I also laid off doing any running because the program is punishing. Until you adapt to the program, don’t try to do anything else. I went from 3 per set and a total of 36 burpees to 6 per set with a total of 72 burpees, for the last five weeks. There has been significant increases in tone and muscle, even over this short period. I have missed 3 out of 28 sessions. I think it makes sense to plan for a week off every quarter, which wasn’t in my original plan. I am going to start trying to work in some running sessions this quarter.

As for meditation, I did manage to do around 50 consecutive days of meditation. Overall, I think it is a good practice. However, I had problems with my android phone I was using to time the individual sessions, and thereafter, I haven’t been regularly doing it.

The problem with my phone ended up being an opportunity. I learned how to get an inexpensive phone set-up with LineageOS. Then, I used the same idea and changed my primary computing platform, buying an old ASUS 201 laptop with bad wi-fi and adding a usb wi-fi adapter and installing Libreboot and Parabola Linux, all for $83.

Parabola is an Arch distribution, which took some getting used to changing from Debian. But, it was not too bad a transition. I find I spend more time on the command line and associated tools in it, e.g., this post was written in Emacs and posted to cafebedouin.org using org2blog. Hopefully, the org2blog set-up will help me to write more original content for cafebedouin.org.

Also I also am trying to stick to a reading list. I have been putting any new books I hear about on a preliminary list for next year rather than trying to read them. I haven’t really been reading much over this quarter. I have been sidetracked on a series of other projects. But, today, I am recommitting to reading and writing more, doing daily meditation, twice a week physical training, and eating better. I’ll follow-up in three months, and we’ll see how it goes.